The Doves of Amber Creek: Chapter Two
A serially-posted novella about lesbian vampires set in the wild west.
(Trigger warnings for racism, abuse of children. Please take care of yourselves!)
Hazel O’Connor’s information was not hard to find.
All over Amber Creek, there were posters: outside the saloons, the general store, the feed store. They littered the streets, half-crushed into a paste of mud, snow, piss and paper. Madam Lucy herself had a flyer in the front of her Bible, tucked away behind a grilled leek recipe. A classified ad ran in The Amber Creek Gazette, down past the obituaries. Hazel offered a reward of seventy-five dollars for tips. Back then, that was the kind of money that would yield results.
Throughout the rest of the day, I tried to push Jennie’s distorted corpse out of my mind. I gathered as many past issues of the newspaper as I could get my hands on, but not once were any of Lucy’s girls, dead or alive, mentioned. It was as if we didn’t exist at all.
I made conversation with a few of my peers, joining them on the balcony during their smoke breaks. They weren’t keen on talking to me at first, but once I mentioned that I was trying to find information about the dead girls, the flood gates opened.
Three months prior, another girl named Lily Donovan had been found in a similar manner.
Last Christmas, it was a woman named Genevieve LaRue.
They gave me more names. More gruesome descriptions. One girl some years back had been found with her head nearly removed. Another they discovered dangling over a back balcony, limp and bloated. Some of the murders were less violent, though that wasn’t saying much. All of them, no matter what, turned up entirely drained of their blood.
“It’s a vampire,” one of the girls remarked, her dark eyes tracing along the rooftops of Amber Creek. “Like in Varney, but worse.”
The other one laughed. “You’re full of shit.”
A breeze ran through us. The girls shivered, pulling their shawls tighter around themselves.
“I’m serious!”
“What do you think, Hannah?” The second girl turned to look at me, her nose pink from the cold. Her eyes grew wide, her tone exaggerated and conspiratorial. “Do you think a vampire is doing all of this?”
I shrugged, looking away.
“You don’t really think a human being could do that,” the first girl said.
“We all know damn well what human beings are capable of,” the second girl snuffed her cigarette out on the railing. Sparks hissed as they met snow. “C’mon. That Aster man wanted both of us again.”
After they left, I looked out over Amber Creek once more. Wooden buildings crept low along the ground, split in two by winding back alleys. In the distance several farms dotted the landscape, their pastures full of snow and barns shut tight.
Down on my left sat a row of shacks, red lanterns unlit and swaying in the wind. If I had made different choices, I would’ve been a crib girl myself. I tore my eyes away, back out to where the church’s steeple pierced the horizon. The sun straddled it, golden and large, burning a red glow across the low, heavy clouds.
I retreated into the parlor and found myself in front of Madam Lucy’s door.
I wanted to ask her more about the murders. I wanted to hear her side of the story, while I still had a chance. The door was locked, though, and behind it she sobbed. Despite this my hand had a mind of its own, poised in the air, ready to knock.
Though I didn’t understand why, I was hit with the urge to tell her everything. What could I say, though? How could I possibly explain any of this in a way that made sense? The words wanted to pour out of me, but they were all too direct, would get me run out of town or worse:
“Hello, sorry for the intrusion—I lied about my name, among other things. When we met the second time you recognized me, if only for a split second. But it’s me; it’s Colette. I was the skinny little thing who landed on your doorstep thirty years ago, when this place was newly yours and yours alone. Do you remember me yet? The same men who repeatedly bought me for an hour to throw me around and rave about how exotic I was hurled rocks through your front windows come Sunday morning, hollering about keeping us darker folk out of Amber Creek. They said you were sullying yourself just through the simple act of employing me. I disappeared, right after. I probably made you worry, at least a little. I’m sorry. Someone made me into this—an ageless, starving thing. I don’t know who did it. I’m only certain of this: every road I’ve ever been on has led me back here.”
Too direct.
I let my hand drop. There was no easy explanation for what I had been, for what I had become. For any of it. Vampires were the subjects of myth and legend, and though I had encountered more over the years I still couldn’t wrap my head around it. The word itself was perhaps the closest thing I had to a diagnosis, though it didn’t fit perfectly. Three decades had come and gone, and I still didn’t know what I was.
The longer I stood there, the more I realized it wasn’t necessarily Lucy I wanted to talk to, it was anyone. The thought, fleeting and desperate, left my face burning. I shoved it down, turning away from Lucy’s door.
Regardless of whether or not I could get her to talk, it was time to leave. My flesh crawled at the thought of another night spent beneath the parlor’s sagging roof. This was one thing about me that had carried over into death: I could never stay in one place for very long. Always, a great set of doors opened within me and some inner gravity pulled me through them. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do next, but my time at Madam Lucy’s was up.
Down the dark hallways, the floorboards by the stairs creaked. I looked up, past the rows of mahogany doorways pressed into red velvet wallpaper. Poised by the banister and illuminated like a ghost, there stood little Annabelle Myers. Moonlight lit her up from behind, casting a glow across her white skirts and pale hair, catching the side of her rounded face, unmarred and smooth. Her cheeks were red, courtesy of the bottle in her hand. She took a long drink, swaying in place.
My stomach turned. “You alright there?”
Annabelle shrugged.
I took a tentative step forward, then another. “I’m Hannah. We sat together in church yesterday.”
“I know who you are,” she said, a bit slurred.
I almost laughed. She had no idea. No one did. “Say, how old are you? Bit young to be hitting the…” I motioned towards her bottle.
She scowled at me. “Bit young to be doing anything, but what’s it matter? I don’t know what you want, but don’t pretend you care about me.”
I stayed quiet.
“I’ll be fourteen in December,” she sighed, leaning over the balcony railing and peering down into the stairwell. The back of her head was a ratted mess. Fresh off the clock. “I was born on Christmas. How fuckin’ awful is that?”
Our elbows brushed as I moved to stand next to her. I took a step back, motioning for her to give me the bottle.
“You know about awful, though,” Annabelle said, tilting her narrow chin to look me in the eye. “I hear the things our patrons say to you in there. Too bad only some of them like being hit,” she pushed the bottle into my palm.
Swallowing, I pressed my nails against the glass until it hurt. “Where’s your mother?”
Her eyes shone. I’d hit a nerve; same as she had. Annabelle set her jaw and grasped for the bottle. I held it out of her reach.
“Dead,” she spat. “What’s it to you, anyway? Give that back—you’re not in charge of me!”
“And your father?”
“Also dead. Gimme that!”
I sighed, handing it back to her. “Slow down with this. You’re going to end up hurt if you’re not careful. You got any family anywhere?”
“Why are you asking me all this stuff? You trying to figure out if anyone will come looking for me?”
I could sense it—the way the air itself almost trembled around her, the slight twitch of her lower lip. I wouldn’t have to try for much longer.
I sat down on the stairs a couple of feet away from her, sweeping my skirts out in front of me. “I’m just asking if you’ve got someone to go back to.”
Annabelle watched me for a long moment, then set the bottle down by her feet. “Grandma’s in Boston. She doesn’t even know Mama died, not yet.”
I lifted my gaze to the window across from the stairwell. The full moon hung obscured behind a thick layer of clouds, plunging our surroundings into darkness. The light from inside only managed to catch a few flakes of snow drifting past. Beyond, pitch black. Howling winds.
A storm was blowing in.
I risked frostbite if I stayed out too late. Perhaps I was foolish, but the wheel inside me had already begun to turn—no stopping it now. I was leaving, no matter what. I had to.
Looking back at Annabelle, it was clear that she also no longer wanted to be there.
In the silence, her stony mask fell to pieces. Her sullen, half-drunk resolve melted into a wobbling lower lip and eyes filled to the brim. She clambered over and plopped down next to me. “I keep thinking about Jennie.”
I stayed quiet. Shutting up was the best method to keep people talking. Sure enough, Annabelle continued, her voice slurred and thick. “I keep thinking…I don’t know. I’m scared. I don’t wanna die, but I feel like—” her voice broke, “I don’t know. You ever have that? That thing…a small yank at the back of your mind, or maybe your soul? You can run or hide but you can’t stop it. At least, I can’t.” Annabelle hugged her knees to her chest. “Looking at Jennie was like looking at myself. I’m not gonna make it.”
Typically, I had the good sense to look away when I was told too much, when someone sunk too low within themselves. This time, I was taken aback—something corkscrewed deep in my gut. From what I’d gathered she hadn’t been at Madam Lucy’s for very long, but already the spark in her eyes had been snuffed out. When I was her age, long ago, it happened to me too. Once the warmth left you, it never returned. She was telling the truth—or at least, her truth.
“I used to feel that way,” I said.
From down the hall came peals of high-pitched, drunken laughter. Some of the girls were together, from the sound of it. Lucy’s sobs had died down, though their muffled cadence lingered. I turned my attention back to Annabelle. A curtain of blonde hair obscured her face. I couldn’t help all the girls in Madam Lucy’s parlor, but I could help this one. “Come to my room.”
She jerked into almost-sobriety, eyes ripping up to my face.
“Never mind,” I interjected. I knew what that look meant. “Wait here. I’ll be back.”
I left Annabelle out on the landing and made my way past Madam Lucy’s sobs, past the giggling and squeaking springs.
My room lay at the end of it all. I creaked the door open and stepped into the cold dark. My eyes adjusted seconds later, and I could see it all plain as day: the freshly cleaned floral sheets on the bed, the new tonics on my nightstand. I didn’t need them, though. Whatever I had become, I was not capable of harboring life, not anymore.
I kept my belongings meager, contained in one suitcase. It was easier to leave without a large burden to carry. My entire being consisted of one singular need: to roam. I never settled down for longer than a month, but I attempted to make myself useful. Place after place I tried to save these girls from something bigger than all of us. From a tide that churned and devoured, from a tremendous wheel whose only purpose was to spin forever.
I gathered a few things. When I peeked back out into the hall, Annabelle had moved to sit outside my door. Chunks of vomit dripped down her chin. Her eyes, red and puffy and a bit more lucid, focused on me.
I sat down next to her and pressed a wad of cash into her palm. “There are better ways of life than this. Professions that won’t break you. I have enough here to send you to Boston, and then some.”
She stared at me.
“Go to your grandmother. Is she religious?”
Annabelle nodded, gazing at the money in her hand. The first tear fell down her cheek, then the second one.
“Don’t tell her all the details. Just tell her…tell her some bad men hurt you. That’s the truth of it, anyhow. And here,” I pressed my thumb into the half-smoothed floral engraving one last time before setting it on the floor between us. “A line of defense, to keep you safe along the way.”
Annabelle picked up the silver dagger, holding it tight. Her hand shook, impossibly small curled around the blade’s handle.
“I’m leaving tonight,” I said. “I’ll talk to Lucy before I go. Have Humphrey take you to the train station in the morning, and don’t let him leave you there by yourself. Understand?”
Nodding, she smudged away tears with the flat of her palm. “Where are you going? Can…can’t you come with me? So I don’t have to go alone?”
“I can’t. I’ve got unfinished business. You’ll be safer away from here. Away from whatever did that to Jennie, and all the girls before her. Go get some sleep, alright? I’ll make sure Lucy and Humphrey help you get to your grandmother.”
“Why are you doing this? Why me?”
I reached over, smoothing out the back of her head. Her eyes filled with tears again, and she leaned into my touch with a shaky child’s sigh. I tried to summon all the gentleness I could, though there wasn’t much of that left. My voice came out tired and old. Perhaps I had not physically aged a day since my death, but my tone betrayed me at times. “I’ve been in it too long. I try to help whoever I can.”
Annabelle nodded, curling into herself. The old wooden floors creaked as she shifted her weight. “But there’s always time for you to get out, too.”
She was more correct than she knew. I had nothing but time, and I chose this path. At this point, the things that had happened to me were my own fault, nothing more.
“You’re right,” I tried for a smile. The muscles in my face wavered. “Go to bed. You’ll be all set in the morning.”
Annabelle sniffled and gave me a tentative hug before picking up the knife, the money, and the bottle. I watched her small form fade into the red-dipped shadows at the end of the hall. Her door clicked shut behind her, and that was it.
I packed the rest of my belongings and crept downstairs. The parlor was beautiful during the day, but it dazzled at night—deep lampshades casting red light across the embossed velvet wallpaper, silks and crystals sweeping overhead, perfectly polished silver serving trays and imported rugs, furniture that had sat there since my first stint but still looked as good as the day it was bought. In the center of it all, Madam Lucy sat draped across the piano, nursing a cigarette.
On the emerald green sofa sat her right-hand man, Humphrey. Humphrey was the muscle of the place: a broad, reserved man who maintained his professional boundaries—something that was rare in the parlors.
Lucy eyed my suitcase. “You’re leaving us, Hannah? I don’t blame you.”
“I’m not quite sure,” I attempted to soften the blow, to pretend that this wasn’t a lasting goodbye. Regardless of where I ended up that night, I wasn’t coming back. I needed to at least try to help, though. Unlike Jennie, Lily, Genevieve, I had survived. “I’m going to speak with Hazel. Hazel O’Connor? Perhaps I can help.”
At the mention of Hazel, a bit of the exhaustion faded from Lucy’s face. She sat up straight. “Ah, Hazel! God, she’d be glad for the help. I’ve tried myself, but there’s only so much I can do, seeing as I’m a couple of degrees…removed. Hazel is a bit eccentric. She was the first to suggest that it might be a vampire, and I laughed at her. I told her she’d been reading too many serials. But now…well. She’s the only one who’s even been trying to piece this thing together. The law is useless. We’re fish in a barrel to them, they don’t give a damn about any of us. Speaking of giving a damn, Hazel sent me the funds to pay for little Jennie’s headstone today.” As soon as Lucy finished the sentence, her face crumpled up again. After a minute, she pulled out her handkerchief and dabbed her eyes. “My Lord, I’m a mess. Humphrey? Can you take Hannah out there?”
With a deep sigh and a groan from the sofa beneath him, Humphrey rose to his feet. “I’ll get the horses.”
Lucy stood as well, twisting to peer out the window from behind the heavy red curtains. “On second thought, it looks bad out there. Are you sure you want to go tonight?”
I nodded. Foolish as it was, I had to leave.
Humphrey stepped out, the parlor door clattering shut behind him.
“Alright, then,” Lucy continued. “Hazel loves visitors. She’s all alone up there on the mountain. Has been since she left her uncle’s care. Frankly, most people around here are a bit scared of her. Or perhaps…put-off is the better word for it. She doesn’t bite, though.”
I frowned. Who, exactly, was I about to encounter? “Is she older, then?”
“No,” Lucy lit her next cigarette, taking a thoughtful drag. Her eyes flitted across the tiled ceiling. “No, no. She’s a young one. Hell, I still remember when she was a child. One day, she let a bunch of squirrels loose during service. They were furious, having been trapped together for who-knows-how-long. Her uncle was livid. It was chaos,” Madam Lucy gave a distant smile. “One of them crawled up my leg. I fainted, I think. I don’t know, exactly, but I didn’t hear the end of it from my girls at the time,” Her face slipped back into sadness. “Agnes—Aggie, we called her. She loved recounting that. A couple of years later, she went missing. They found her down by the church. Same as everyone else: bite marks, stake, no blood. Violated and tortured, not as bad as the later ones, but still…she was one of the first to go.”
The door to the parlor slammed open again. A frigid gust of wind blew in, carrying Humphrey with it. “Hurry,” he said. “Storm’s here. It’ll only get worse the longer we wait.”
I rose to my feet, clutching my suitcase tight. “Before I go—”
“Miss Hannah,” Humphrey prodded.
“Annabelle needs help,” I squared my shoulders. “She’s real scared about the murders and wants to go home to her grandmother in Boston. The ticket’s covered, she only needs a ride to the train station in the morning, after this storm blows over.”
“Poor thing,” Lucy said. “I only took her in so she wouldn’t end up a crib girl. My Lord, if I had known she had family—” she let out a long sigh. “Well, thank you anyway. We’ll take it from here. Good luck with Hazel.”
We exchanged goodbyes, and I followed Humphrey into the night.
Snow whipped between us as we trudged out to the cart. In the short span of time since the storm had started, there were already several inches. I climbed up next to Humphrey, who gave me his scarf and an oil lantern to hold and then we were off, heading onto the main road out of town. The wind howled, lashing at our faces. Above, the moonlight only managed to scrape through some of the clouds. Every so often, the pine trees around us lit up, but the light always disappeared as fast as it arrived.
Hazel’s property ended up being several miles out of town and up the mountain, as Lucy had mentioned on our way out the door. By the time we reached the edge of it, the moon was gone and we sat in complete darkness, save for our oil lamps. The wind died down. My ears burned. The sounds of the horses and the creaking of a cart well-past its prime echoed, bouncing off the trees.
Humphrey let me off where a trail diverged from the road, climbing its way further into the thick pines shrouding the mountain. Downhill, faint lights twinkled in the tiny valley where Amber Creek sat.
“Carriage can’t go any further, not in these conditions. Want me to go up there with you?”
I looked up the slope. Chimney smoke twisted into the sky, curling into itself and melding with the clouds above. Hazel was home. “I’ll be alright.”
“I’ll wait here for a bit. Give you time to get there and back in case something goes wrong. Knowing Miss Hazel, though, she’ll be thrilled to have you.”
I must’ve hesitated, because Humphrey kept talking.
“She’s…different, yeah, but we like her. She’s been good to us. To the girls. If it weren’t for her, Miss Lucy would be falling apart.”
“How long has she been trying to get to the bottom of this?”
“Gotta be a year or two, now. You’ll have to ask her yourself—you need help getting down?”
Shaking my head, I dropped into the snow and hiked up my skirts, thanking Humphrey and saying goodbye.
The further I strayed from the cart, the darker my surroundings dipped. The forest itself breathed around me; long, heavy sighs with each stroke of wind that swept across the black landscape. Snow fell through the pines in a steady, high-pitched whisper. The clouds had long gone. In their place hung a tapestry of stars. When I turned and looked back, the view was incredible: mountains all around, Amber Creek in the distance, the moon casting a blue tint across wide swaths of snow.
For the first time in a long time, my soul exhaled—just a little bit.
Then I looked down.
One set of footprints had traversed the path since the storm began. They were large, as if belonging to a man. The tracks headed upwards but didn’t descend in the other direction. My stomach turned.
I stopped in my own tracks, glancing back over my shoulder.
Was it a mistake? Was this the wrong property?
Humphrey had promised to wait long enough for me to get there and back. I owed it to him—and to myself—to at least try.
The wind picked up again, battering my face, my ears. I was always cold, but this was a different, deeper sort. Before long, I had to narrow my focus to taking one step forward at a time. The roar in my head almost as loud as the wind surrounding me, I counted up to ten in my head; once and then again. It kept me steady, kept me moving.
Hazel’s home appeared after a bend in the trail.
I slowed to a stop.
Warm, golden light seeped out from the windows, blurring in the snow-whipped breeze. It was a rudimentary building, somewhere between a cabin and a shack. A stone chimney poked out of the sloping, uneven roof. Billows of smoke puffed from the top. Dozens of horseshoes hung along the front, some nailed over the door frame while others dangled from the porch’s snow-covered roof. In the breeze they hit against one another; metallic clanging echoed down the mountain.
The large footprints led right up to the door.
Twisting, I stole another glance backwards. From this point on the mountain, I could barely make out the distant twinkle of Humphrey’s lantern down the hill. I shook out my hands and took a shaky step forward, then another, until I ended up at the base of the stairs.
Several pairs of men’s work boots, each at various levels of disrepair, sat out in neat rows next to the doormat.
I hung back for a moment, racking my brain. Perhaps Hazel had a husband. Or a brother. I was coming over unannounced; there was a fair chance that someone else could be visiting.
Or that I was at the wrong place altogether.
I looked back in Humphrey’s direction, squinting. All black, all the way down. My stomach dropped. I scanned the area once, twice, three times over. Nothing.
Humphrey—and my way back to civilization—was gone.
I swore under my breath, then trudged up the loose steps and knocked on the door.
After a long moment, heavy footsteps thudded towards me, shaking the entire cabin right down to its foundation. Just as the thought of running away crossed my mind, the front door swung open.
P.S.: I’ve got a notes/addendum page that has some extra tidbits and behind-the-scenes historical stuff for each chapter. You can find that here!
I’ve also got a compiled version here.
Both of these will be continuously updated as chapters are released.